From 2015 to 2017, Netflix’s Narcos chronicled the notorious criminal career of Colombian narcoterrorist and drug lord Pablo Escobar. Now, a new Hulu series, Dear Killer Nannies, offers a different perspective, shifting the focus to Escobar’s son, Juan Pablo Escobar, also known as “Juampi,” and his life amid the chaos of his father’s criminal empire, Biography reported.
John Leguizamo stars in the series alongside Janer Villareal, who plays a teenage Juan Pablo. Here’s what to know about Dear Killer Nannies and the real-life story behind it.
Real-life assassins hired by Escobar to ‘babysit’ his son inspired ‘Dear Killer Nannies’
Juan Pablo Escobar, the eldest child of Pablo Escobar and his wife Maria Victoria Henao, was born on Feb. 24, 1977. In a YouTube interview with author Tegan Broadwater, Juan Pablo — the only surviving son of the “King of Cocaine” — recalled learning about his father’s criminal life at just 7 years old.
“He sat me down and told me, ‘Hey, son, I want you to know that I am a bandit and this is what I do for a living,’” he said. “From that exact moment, my father had no trouble watching the news with me, reading newspapers and magazines, and telling me, ‘Yes, I am responsible for this’ or ‘I’m not.’”
Despite Escobar’s fortune — which is estimated to have reached as high as $30 billion at the peak of his criminal empire — Juan Pablo’s upbringing was both privileged and deeply restricted. At 14, he was gifted a Ferrari Testarossa, now valued at more than $565,000. Yet, even though the family had money, they sometimes went hungry due to often being on the run, NPR reported.
To protect his son, Escobar even assigned hired assassins to act as babysitters. It’s their experiences as these unlikely “nannies” that ultimately inspired the Hulu series.
Juan Pablo and Henao tried to rebuild their lives in Argentina after Escobar’s 1993 death
After Escobar’s death in 1993, Juan Pablo and Henao moved to Argentina, where they assumed new identities, Biography reported. Juan Pablo became Sebastián Marroquín and went on to study architecture and industrial design in Buenos Aires, according to NPR. Despite the name change, he struggled to find work and move beyond the weight of his father’s legacy.
As he attempted to rebuild his life, Juan Pablo and Henao were arrested and imprisoned on money-laundering charges. In a YouTube interview with former crime boss Michael Franzese, Juan Pablo explained that an accountant discovered their true identities and attempted to extort them.
“We decided to go to the police and tell the truth: ‘Look, we are the Escobars, and we have this accountant who is trying to extort us, so we need your help,’” Juan Pablo said in the interview. “So they put us in jail… because it looks better to put the Escobars in jail instead of helping them, even though we were victims of a crime.”
The pair were ultimately released in 2006 following a ruling by Argentina’s Supreme Court. In the years since, Juan Pablo — who still goes by Marroquín — became a touring public speaker, sharing his story with young people and warning about the dangers of drug trafficking. He has also advocated for the legalization of cocaine as a way to weaken cartels and has reached out to several of his father’s victims to apologize, NPR reported.
Where Juan Pablo is now?
In addition to public speaking, Juan Pablo is also an author who has written extensively about his father and his upbringing, including in the 2014 memoir Pablo Escobar: My Father and the 2025 illustrated comic book Escobar: Una Educación Criminal. In the latter, he reflects on his childhood — including his close relationships with the assassins assigned to protect him.
Dear Killer Nannies is a story Juan Pablo believes “deserved to be told,” he told The Latin Times. He has been outspoken about what he sees as the media’s glorified portrayal of his father and is passionate about the Hulu series delivering “a clear message that violence doesn’t lead anywhere good.”
“Throughout the entire series, you never see a brick of cocaine,” he noted, despite the story centering on “the biggest drug trafficker in history,” because “that is not the focus. The focus is the child’s point of view.”
Dear Killer Nannies is now streaming on Hulu.
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